Tag: Campaign 2008

McCain’s Extramarital Affair with Cindy Ended His Friendship with Reagans in the 1970s

Jon Ponder
Strained: Reagan with McCain before she endorsed him earlier this year
Strained: Reagan with McCain before she endorsed him earlier this year

The Los Angeles Times published a story today, front page above the fold, detailing the adulterous personal history of a presidential candidate, a story that would be upending the dynamics of the 2008 presidential campaign — possibly even throwing the election to the other party — had the story been about a Democratic candidate.
The media will ignore this story, even when McCain campaigns in California for a constitutional amendment that protects marriage — not from adultery, the real threat to marriage — but from gay people seeking equal rights.
Instead, the story is about John McCain, the Republican, and is therefore bound to be ignored by the rest of the mainstream press.

The only possible interest the story might generate in the corporate media — and in conservative circles, where McCain is already not particularly well-liked — stems from the fact that McCain’s extramarital affair with his current wife, Cindy, permanently ended his friendship with Ronald Reagan and, especially, his wife, Nancy, around the same time Reagan was running for president 30 years ago.

The Times article opens with the strained moments around Nancy Reagan’s tepid endorsement of McCain earlier this year:

Outside her Bel-Air home, Nancy Reagan stood arm in arm with John McCain and offered a significant — but less than exuberant — endorsement.

“Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided, and then we endorsed,” the Republican matriarch said in March. “Well, obviously this is the nominee of the party.” They were the only words she would speak during the five-minute photo op.

In a written statement, she described McCain as “a good friend for over 30 years.” But that friendship was strained in the late 1970s by McCain’s decision to divorce his first wife, Carol, who was particularly close to the Reagans, and within weeks marry Cindy Hensley, the young heiress to a lucrative Arizona beer distributorship.

[…]

Rudy’s Adultery Problem Raises Its Ugly Head

Jon Ponder

During his term as mayor of New York, which coincided with his 16-year marriage to Donna Hanover, a local television personality, Rudolph Giuliani reportedly had at least two extramarital affairs. The first of these, as alleged by Hanover and a Vanity Fair article from the time, was with his press spokeswoman, Cristyne Lategano. Their affair apparently ended around 1999.

Mayor Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during his affair with Judith Nathan.

Soon afterwards, the mayor began seeing Judith Nathan, a pharmaceutical sales executive. In May 2000, Giuliani famously called a news conference to announce he was seeking a divorce from Donna Hanover — who learned about his plan to divorce her while watching his announcement on television.

The divorce proceedings were messy and played out like a reality show version of “Dynasty” or “Dallas” in the local news. Hanover and the Giuliani children remained at the mayor’s official residence while the mayor decamped to the apartment of a gay couple. His affair with Nathan was an open secret — she was barred by court order from visiting the mayor’s residence — but unacknowledged publicly.

Yesterday, news reports suggested that during this period, Giuliani may have cooked the books to hide expenses related to his visits to Nathan at her home in Southampton, in the Long Island suburbs:

As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.

The documents … show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing lawyers for indigent defendants.

At the time, the mayor’s office refused to explain the accounting to city auditors, citing “security.”

The Hamptons visits resulted in hotel, gas and other costs for Giuliani’s New York Police Department security detail.

The alleged billing shell game went on for three summers, from 1999 through the first weekend in September 2001, just days before the attack by al Qaeda that brought down the World Trade Center towers.

Giuliani and Nathan were married in 2003.

Glass Booth Helps You Choose Your Perfect Presidential Candidate

Buck Banks

Somebody was bound to come up with a mechanism of choosing a presidential candidate for people who are too stoopid to understand the issues or too disengaged to learn about the candidates but who still, for some reason, feel compelled to vote. Oh, and to make it really simple for those MySpace fools, it’s Web-based, too, as a social media tool should be.

It’s called Glass Booth, and it’s really simple. Place your finger on the screen and follow the words closely. Glass Booth provides a series of issues. It gives you 20 points. You assign points to the issues depending on how important you think they are, keeping in mind you only have 20 points to spread over 14 issues. Then you take a little quiz on your orientation on a number of issues from gay rights to abortion to funding the war in Iraq, complete with links to (of course) Wikipedia, in case you forget what the Second Amendment is about.

I suspected who would be the candidate whose views most closely matched mine, and I was right. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and I share 89 percent of the same positions on the issues. If only he hadn’t seen that UFO …. It was close, though. I share 83 percent with Mike Gravel and 75 percent with John Edwards. What a relief — Obama and Hillary were nowhere in sight.

Check it out for yourself and let the Internets decide who you should vote for. It’s easy, it takes just a couple of minutes and it’s painless. Best of all, it takes almost zero cogitation. Really.

Krauthammer: Reagan Wasn’t All That Great

Jon Ponder

Rightwing big thinker Charles Krauthammer trashes Reagan’s 11th Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of other Republicans,” by picking at the weakness of the GOP’s ’08 field — and then speaks ill of Reagan too, for good measure:

Major grumbling among conservatives about the Republican field. So many candidates, so many flaws. Rudy Giuliani, abortion apostate. Mitt Romney, flip-flopper. John McCain, Mr. Amnesty. Fred Thompson, lazy boy. Where is the paragon? Where is Ronald Reagan?

Well, what about Reagan? This president, renowned for his naps, granted amnesty to 3 million illegal immigrants in the 1986 Simpson-Mazzoli bill. As governor of California, he signed the most liberal abortion legalization bill in America, then flip-flopped and became an abortion opponent. What did he do about it as president? Gave us Sandra Day O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, the two swing votes that upheld and enshrined Roe v. Wade for the past quarter-century.

Of course, Krauthammer then proceeds to proclaim the current crop of candidates to be an exceptional group of fellows, among whom is the party’s next great leader.

Still it’s nice that he reminded his readers what the rest of us remember all too well. Reagan wasn’t all that great. His illness was genuine cause for sympathy and the memory of his rough edges were smoothed over by the long years of suffering. Plus his image benefits from the fact that the current president is the worst one ever. Even Bush I looks better when compared to his son.

Huckabee, Media’s Nice Guy, Was the First Republican to Smear Gays in ’08 Debate

Jon Ponder

New York Times columnist Gail Collins perfectly captures the conventional wisdom about Mike Huckabee in today’s edition:

Why would the family values crowd prefer a batshit crazy adulterating New Yorker, a Hollywood actor/abortion lobbyist or a Mormon to one of their own?

Like Bill Clinton, Huckabee was born in a town called Hope and became a pretty good governor of a state that doesn’t make it all that easy. (Plus, you have to love the fact that he lived for a while in a mobile home on the Arkansas Statehouse grounds.) He’s extremely inclusive, defending minorities who are illegal immigrants as well as the ones registered to vote.

Inclusive? Preacher Huckabee was the first and only ’08 candidate (so far) to slur a gay person, who also happens to be a member of Congress:

“Let’s face it,” he recently told a crowd of Christian conservatives in Iowa… “In our lifetimes, we’ve seen our country go from ‘Leave It to Beaver’ to ‘Beavis and Butt-head,’ from Barney Fife to Barney Frank, from ‘Father Knows Best’ to television shows where father knows nothing.”

Collins continues:

On the downside, I think he’d be a terrible president. He doesn’t know beans about foreign affairs, he wants to replace the income tax with a national sales tax, and his positions on social issues are far to the right of the general populace. But why aren’t the social conservatives rallying around this guy? Unlike any of the major candidates, he’s still on his first wife and first position on abortion.

Why would the family values crowd prefer a batshit crazy adulterating New Yorker, a Hollywood actor/abortion lobbyist or a Mormon to one of their own?

Because the Cheney-Bush crowd has spent the last six years scaring the bejesus out of them. These feeble-minded souls are convinced that Osama has an army of suiciders on its way to blow up every Walmart store in America. They want someone who will protect them.

Perhaps types Establishment (or maybe non-Southerners) can’t see Huckabee as his own peeps do. They sense weakness, or at least a decided lack of toughness. (His signature accomplishment is losing 110 pounds.)

Huckabee’s jab at Barney Frank, which was briefly a soundbite from a debate in March, was a pathetic attempt to pander to the haters. It didn’t work because it was way too mild.

If he can’t smear a queer better than that, how can he protect me Osama bin Laden?

Should They Put Al Gore on the Florida Ballot?

Buck Banks

‘To be or not to be.’

Co-editor Trish is all in a dither these days over the state of Democratic politics in Florida. Since her ballot would not be counted in Florida’s (in the eyes of the national Democratic Party — illegal) Jan. 29 vote, she says she’s not sure she’ll even vote in the presidential primary. But maybe there’s something that would get Trish to cast a ballot for a presidential candidate after all: Al Gore.

It’s almost Shakespearean.

The St. Petersburg Times’ Buzz column suggests that leaders of Florida’s Democratic Party easily could add Gore to the ballot they draw up this weekend:

Heck, most of the other Florida-snubbing Democratic candidates say Florida’s primary is so meaningless they won’t even send their spouses to mix with party regulars in Orlando this weekend. Why not have some fun with it then, and add a Nobel Peace Prize winner to the Florida ballot? Call it a favor to those Palm Beachers who accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan in 2000 and want another chance to vote for Gore. Hillary and company probably wouldn’t love the idea, but she and the rest of the field haven’t exactly been dolling out favors lately to Florida Democrats.

Why not, indeed. Although Buzz does admit to making the suggestion just to create some, ahem, buzz at this weekend’s state convention, it makes this piquant observation:

Al Gore back on the Florida ballot, after the national Democrats opted not to count Florida’s Democratic votes. It’s almost Shakespearean.

As he Bard himself might have suggested: hoist the Democratic candidates on their own petard and be done with it.

Yet Another Reason to Not Take the Florida Dems Seriously

Buck Banks

I received another weird e-mail from Florida Democratic Party chair Karen Thurman. She started off gloating over Republican national party chair Mel Martinez stepping down after only nine months on the job:

Does the Florida Democratic Party have so much money and resources that it can waste it on a spoof Web site that appears to serve no purpose beyond entertaining members of their own team?

Remember how he had big plans to resurrect the Republican Party and rehabilitate its image? It appears that was an insurmountable task.

But we shouldn’t be surprised. Martinez ignored the Floridians he was elected to represent by siding with President Bush over the people on just about everything.

One of the biggest debacles occurred this week, when Martinez and 14 Republican Representatives from Florida ripped away the promise of medical coverage for half a million uninsured Florida children and millions more children across the country.

Okay, I can understand that, and Thurman’s point is valid. Then she goes on a bit about how the SCHIP was passed on her watch in Congress. Then she begins to level accusations against the Republican Party:

Now the Republicans have put the program and millions of children in grave danger. I believe their decision to block healthcare for children will go down as a major turning point in history. No amount of spin can cover up the simple fact that these Republicans, like Feeney and Keller, chose Bush over Florida’s kids.

This vote demonstrates, in the starkest of terms, why we’re Democrats.

But here Thurman (and the FlaDems) go off the rails:

Rank-and-file, right-wing Republicans are so fed up with their candidates blustering, flip-flopping and backtracking that they’ve become desperate for another option. They need a Real Republican.

We’re giving them one.

What humdinger of an idea is coming? It’s a Web site called Draft Katherine Harris. Clever, huh? It’s ironical!

Yep, in a letter where Thurman asks for a contribution no less than six times, she unveils a Web site plastered over with unflattering photos of former Florida attorney general, erstwhile gubernatorial candidate and certifiable whack-job Katherine Harris that is intended to be humorous. I guess it would be if this were something besides a presidential election.

Does the Florida Democratic Party have so much money and resources that it can waste it on a spoof Web site that appears to serve no purpose beyond entertaining members of their team? I’m certainly no fan of Katherine Harris, but I’m even less a fan of Karen Thurman, whose judgment and leadership are certainly questionable in this instance.

Here you’ve got the state Democratic Party, which has already been put through the wringer by the Republican state legislature (oh, wait, that’s right — it was a Democrat who filed the bill to move the state’s primary to Jan. 29, incurring the wrath of the national party and rendering its primary meaningless) and the Democratic National Committee, paying to design and host a “satirical site” that is neither funny nor in good taste.

Seems to me the only joke around here is the Florida Democratic Party. And it’s not funny, either.

Borowitz Says Democrats Will Find a Way to Screw Up; Republicans Say They Already Did

Trish

Andy Borowitz needs to come to Florida. His parody column isn’t a spoof here — it’s reality.

Like manna from heaven, the Democratic presidential candidates’ boycott of Florida’s Jan. 29 primary has state GOP leaders giddy.

Amid a growing belief that there is no way the Democrats can blow the 2008 presidential election, Democratic National Committee chief Howard Dean sought today to reassure the party faithful that the party was “doing everything in its power” to uphold its losing tradition.

At a top-level summit called “Defeat: 2008” being held in Boston, the former Vermont Governor gave a rousing speech to concerned Democrats, bringing his audience to his feet by vowing, “I can assure each and every one of you, we will find a way to screw this up.”

Actually they already did. And while Democrats don’t acknowledge that banning candidates from campaigning in Florida to punish the state for moving its primary date is the dumbest thing they’ve ever done, the Republicans do.

Sure Republicans head into 2008 with an unpopular president, an unpopular war and no consensus on their best presidential candidate. But like manna from heaven, the Democratic presidential candidates’ boycott of Florida’s Jan. 29 primary has state GOP leaders giddy.

“I cannot imagine any candidate for president ever signing (such a pledge), but they have,” a beaming state Republican chairman Jim Greer told party leaders at the Presidency IV convention Sunday in Orlando…

“Our party, because of what the Democrats have done, has an opportunity that it has never had before…” Greer said. “Rules are important to any organization, but no one should be a prisoner of the rules.”

Even a Republican makes sense every now and then. Or, as Borowitz imagined it:

“Folks, let’s not forget, we’re Democrats,” Mr. Dean said. “If there’s a way to lose, we will find it.”

Republican Breakthrough: Candidates Finally Suck Up to an Ethnic Group

Trish

The Republican presidential candidates’ “scheduling conflicts” seem to only crop up around events that cater to Latino, African-American, or YouTube voters. Not only are the Daytimers wide open for Jewish groups, many of the candidates have such an affinity for all things Hebrew that they might call Madonna for Kaballah lessons.

Just ask them.

…it came as no surprise yesterday when five presidential aspirants addressing a forum of Republican Jews all touted their Jewish credentials…

Yet not one of the candidates condemned the recent comments of Republican shock jockette Ann Coulter, who said Jews need “to be perfected.”

Mitt Romney spoke of his “old friend” Binyamin Netanyahu. Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson used the words “Israel,” “Israeli” or “Israelis” 13 times in about 45 minutes. Sen. Sam Brownback told a story involving how hard it is to find a “nice, young Jewish man” in his home state of Kansas. And Rudy Giuliani recalled the moment in 1980 or so when he just knew the Gipper was going to become the next president.

“I was at a bar mitzvah reception in Manhattan,” the former New York City mayor said. “One after one, everybody’s talking about voting for Ronald Reagan.”

Oh puh-lease. Can you for one second imagine substituting these fond phony-isms about Jews with ones about blacks or Hispanics or — holy moly! — gays?

Mitt Romney: “As I told my old pal Tyler Perry the other day…”

John McCain: “I’ll never forget when my family was at a Quinceañera celebration and everyone was talking about voting for Bob Dole…”

Actually, it would probably sound more like Bill O’Reilly marveling over how much like regular people the blacks at the restaurant he visited are. Actual O’Reilly quote:

“I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it’s run by blacks, primarily black patronship.”

Maybe it’s best if the Republicans confine the sucking up to groups with whom they feel comfortable.

Yet, even with everyone whipping out their yarmulkes, not one of the candidates took a moment to condemn the recent comments of Republican shock jockette Ann Coulter, who said Jews need “to be perfected.” Come on guys, where is your real loyalty? To your new Jewish pals or your old reliable Republican mouthpieces?

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

NY Post’s Podhoretz: Thompson’s a Drag

Trish

It’s not a good time to be Fred Thompson. After his debate debut, which confirmed that his fire in the belly is most likely from too much fried food, many folks who hailed him as the next big thing for the GOP are proclaiming their disappointment.

The New York Post’s John Podhoretz drilled down to the problem. Fred’s depressing.

Podhoretz — These debates are mostly about the impressions they offer of the candidates, and the impression Thompson offered was: He’s old.

…these debates are mostly about the impressions they offer of the candidates, and the impression Thompson offered was: He’s old.

This has nothing to do with his age.

John McCain is six years older than Thompson but with the renewed enthusiasm he’s been showing lately, he looked and sounded five years younger.

And Rudy Giuliani is only two years younger than Thompson, but in offering yet another punchy performance, he seemed as though he were a member of a different, younger generation.

Thompson’s chief problem – the problem that reinforces the impression not that he’s full of enthusiasm at the prospect of leading the country but more that he’s ready for the Earlybird Special – is the world-weary mien he wears as he talks about the problems and difficulties facing the United States.

He’s not the crabby grandfather of the Ross Perot type who harangues you with one of those “in my day we worked for a living” speeches. That role is increasingly being filled by Ron Paul, the anti-war libertarian.

Thompson is more like the impressive and kindly elderly gentleman who’s just seen too much in his life to get all fired up, but when asked he will allow that things are going to hell in a handbasket and there’s not much we can do about it.

Maybe that’s why the pictures of him and his way younger second wife, especially the ones with their spawn, creep me out so much. The thought that anyone would want to get funky with that face, those liver-spotted lips, that…well, anyway. The point is, Fred’s no fun.